Olympians Share Experiences in Panel Discussion

Members of the heavyweight crew team and Taylor Ritzel '10.

Oct 05, 2012

NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Six out of the seven
Yale grads that competed at the 2012 Olympic Games shared their
experiences in a panel discussion at the Law School Auditorium on
Thursday night. Rowers Ashley Brzozowicz
’04, Tess Gerrand ’10,
Jamie Redman ’08 and Taylor Ritzel
’10 and sailors Sarah Lihan
’10 and Stuart McNay ’05 took
turns reflecting on their time in London, both on and off the
water. Moderator Ron Vaccaro ‘04, the current Editorial
Director for NBC Sports and NBC Sports Network, led the
discussion.

Athletic Director Tom Beckett made a few opening remarks,
highlighting that it was a Yale grad, Eddie Eagan
‘21, who was the first person in the history of the
Olympics to win a gold medal in both the Summer and the Winter
Games. The other notable Yale alumni mentioned were
Bob Kiphuth, head coach of the Yale men’s
swimming team from 1918 to 1959, who went to five Olympics as a
coach including with one of his swimmers, Don Schollander
‘68, who was the most successful athlete at the 1964
Games with four gold medals.

Charlie Cole ’07 also competed in London
this summer, winning a bronze medal in rowing as three-seat of the
U.S. men’s four, but was not present Thursday night.

The panel opened with a general discussion of what these London
Games were like from the perspective of the athlete.
Brzozowicz and McNay both competed in the Beijing Game in 2008, and
so the experience of a second Olympics for them meant better
preparation -- and in Brzozowicz’s case, better results.

“For me these games were a chance to be as prepared as we
possibly could,” said Brzozowicz. “For the first
week when we were still racing as rowers, we were sort of doing our
normal thing and we felt a real ability to remain on track for what
we wanted to do, getting a podium finish. Afterwards it was
amazing to go from only focusing on the six-minute race in your
sport to getting to experience the entire Olympic Games firsthand,
being a superfan and cheering on your teammates in other
sports.”

As a sailor, McNay was able to put things in perspective for
those who take part in sports that don’t get year-round
primetime media coverage.

“The Olympic Games are a showcase for all these
professional athletes who don’t get paid the big bucks or
don’t get the huge attention that the popularized sports do
get,” said McNay. “So feeling the energy from the
competition and identifying with that, having been through the same
things in my own sport and my own training, was really very
special.”

Redman graduated in 2008 just before the Beijing Games, and
offered a colorful take on what it was like to finally experience
the Olympics.

“When people have asked me to characterize my Olympic
Games, I say that it is like the culmination of the Super Bowl,
college March Madness, Christmas, your birthday and college spring
break…every single day,” said Redman. “The
quality of competition is so much higher than I had ever
seen. I had made a few national teams and I thought I had
seen some good racing at NCAA’s, but all of a sudden crews
that were a distant fourth, fifth or sixth place at the World
Championships last year were in the hunt for a medal. Race
after race after race, no winning margin was big enough, and no
losing margin was too big.”

On the theme of “it’s not the triumph, it’s
the struggle” Gerrand shared her interesting, hard-fought
road to London. Australia had not sent a women's eight
overseas since the Beijing Games, and so she was relegated to
training in a single for much of the time since she graduated from
Yale. The prospects of sending an eight to London did not
look good.

“I was already training for Rio in February,” said
Gerrand.

Not long after successfully petitioning Rowing Australia and the
Australian sports minister to allow for an eight to be sent to
FISA’s Final Olympic Qualification Regatta, Gerrand finished
third in the pair at the Australian national championships and
earned a seat in the crew. At the qualification regatta in
Lucerne, Switzerland, in May, the Australian women’s eight
won by more than three seconds and was would stay in Europe to
train for London 2012.

Ritzel rowed against Gerrand in the Olympic women’s eight
final, but her own journey to Dorney Lake was quite
different. A swimmer in high school, Ritzel was a walk-on
rower as a freshman at Yale who would climb the ranks and serve as
team captain as a senior. Her success at Yale is undoubtedly
linked to her success with the national team.

“The more I learned about the sport and having met some
women on the Yale team that were a part of the national team, I
thought not only had I gone from just watching these people on TV
but to knowing them and having raced with them, it [rowing on the
national team] just became more real,” said Ritzel.

Perhaps the most daunting question of the night was what lies
ahead for this group of athletes. Lihan has been living and
training at home in Florida for the past two years, and like many
other athletes returning from London she finds herself wondering
what the future has in store.

“Going home really makes you evaluate what you’re
doing, and whether you want to move forward, and that’s not a
decision I have made yet,” said Lihan.
“There’s this very big progression. You qualify
for the national team and you qualify for the Olympic team.
You show up at the Games and every day you have a schedule from
seven to ten and then all of a sudden…that’s all
gone.”

While four years from now may Yale may have an entirely
different group of athletes headed to Rio, the seven Bulldogs that
competed in London will be recognized at halftime of
Saturday’s football game against Dartmouth. With three
medals from London 2012, Yale as a country would have won as many
or more than 36 countries that competed in the Games.